When I first started teaching, there was a hiring freeze. I remember almost literally hiding under the table at work. A group of teachers were let go -- "excessed". It meant they would be reassigned. Another young teacher and I were taken off the payroll, then mysteriously re-placed on it. We should have been excessed, but we weren't. We were simply "re-hired". Somehow I never missed a paycheck. (I think my principal said she told the then "Board of Education" that we were hired and had been working unpaid with the understanding we would get paid as soon as the freeze was over. She didn't even cover up what she had done.) I learned then the magic a principal can engage in if s/he is powerful enough. Sixteen years later (thirteen years of which I spent teaching), I've been excessed. I've been told that I will be placed AT MY SCHOOL. What that means is, I will no longer have a full schedule, but will be paid by the Dept. of Education (at full salary) to BE A SUBSTITUTE. That is, until they can place me somewhere else in a full time job. That status of limbo could last for years except that my school itself is closing in June. So, they will have to place us all eventually.
What is the LOGIC of paying me TO DO LESS? Punishment. My school didn't meet its projected numbers of students. Part of the reason we didn't meet our numbers is that we HAVE BEEN CUTTING STUDENTS from our rosters. We've been encouraged to do this BECAUSE the Dept. of Education has been planning on closing us. Why this encouragement to purge our rosters of students as often as possible wasn't a clear sign to all of us to do something, I don't know. Maybe we didn't believe there was hope, but I think we just didn't take in that someone would really CLOSE us. Move us, hide us, make it impossible to find us -- all of that, sure. Meanwhile, it was a fait accomplis.
Now what happenst to me and three other teachers, all of them quite good: They lose the money to pay me, but the Dept. of Ed. pays me to substitute. If nobody's absent, I still get paid.
How does this relate to my earlier experience? I guess I wonder if our principal had wanted to change things and could have done so. When those teachers were excessed back at that first school, it was clear that the principal didn't mind losing them. I know politics at what Mr. Bloomberg re-named the "Dept. of Education" have changed, but I still wonder.
Your thoughts are always welcome.
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